Massively Flexible Mobile Systems

5G network is expected to provide mMTC (massive Machine Type Communications or massive Internet of Things [mIoT]) slices in the near future, coinciding with expectations for a significant increase in the IoT global market. Many new IoT use cases are anticipated to be deployed using 5G which requires mMTC performance. Release 17 introduces several mMTC features. However, as of release 19, 3GPP does not claim full support of mMTC slices. Even if 5G cannot fully support mMTC network slices yet, several network features are already standardized and included in commercial-graded 5G networks. These features allow for the reconfiguration of the network to provide communication performance close to what is provided in mMTC slices. This paper analyzes and evaluates several of these features, demonstrating that current 5G networks are already capable of supporting some of the mMTC use cases expected to be deployed in the future.